In honor of 90 years of women having the right to vote in the United States as of yesterday, I’m featuring my great-great grandma Irene. The littlest guy biting his lip is my great-grandpa.

She registered to vote in 1912, a year after women could do so in California.

Did she follow along with the politics of her all-male family?

Not only was she Socialist (although they all went Bull Moose for 1914), she was the matron of the YMCA in Berkeley. The YMCA (address listed for great-great grandpa) is still the same today, and my great-grandpa took over his dad’s job for a while when his parents retired from the YMCA in the 1920s.  I need to research but they may have been the first 2 directors there.

Yep, two generations of my family’s leadership at the Berkeley…

YMCA by the Village People

If any of them had been alive when that ubiquitous song came out in 1978 I like to think they would have laughed.